I am reading Tricks of the windows game programming and I now am in the part where he explains the windows programming models and all the stuffs windows has for me to modify in order to create my program.I read it all once and I barely understood half of it.Am I a dummy or I will get to understand them through time and practise?Any help would be appreciated.

Listen Mage.I notice just some time ago you were asking what a loop was.I am not sure but this could mean you arent yet steady in c/c++. I am not trying to start anything but you do know that
c/c++ knowledge is required in order to read Tricks.So if you dont know either one yet, id recommend learning it before reading tricks.If you already do then thats fine with me.

Access is right. Looking at your other post, it seems like you still haven''t fully grasped the language yet. You should definately finish learning C/C++ before you go on to Windows and DirectX. You''re not a dummy, you''re just moving too fast. Slow down a little and go one step at a time.

Once you set up a standard windows skeleton, you can move on to DirectX or another graphics API, just reuse the windows code each time you start another project. You will soon get used to it as a necessary evil.

Note: If you want to learn windows application programming (as opposed to games), then you will need to understand the windows messaging/callback system intimately.

,Jay

I am reading also a book about C++ but I don''t have problems understanding the language of TRICKS so far.My problem is that it has many tables such as the one about window classes.There are many many many of these things and what I want to ask you and you didn''t answer is :Am I supposed to learn them all by heart?

Most programmers always keep their books handy for reference.

Probably the hardest part to get the hang of is knowing what you want to do and translating that to knowing what is available to do it.

Kind of like - "Oh yeah, I know that function does that, but it has parameters that I can't remember - I'll need to look it up"

So to answer your question, do you need to memorize tables by heart, no not really. Just be familiar enough with the function sets to know which function you need to use, and look it up for its details. Eventually, you'll remember what you need to know.

Examine sample programs and see how they do things to get a feel for how they accomplish what they do.

[edited by - Waverider on March 19, 2002 10:55:35 AM]